Many exhibits at Teyler’s museum are still as they were originally in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; so giving visitors an idea not just of fossils or ancient Dutch, Italian, etc. paintings; but of how in the history of museums these used to be exhibited as well.

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SOME of civilisation’s greatest artefacts – including Beethoven’s manuscripts and the original drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Galileo – can now be saved for future generations, thanks to a breakthrough by scientists.

Tens of thousands of priceless hand-drawn or hand-written documents held in museums and galleries around the world are slowly disintegrating because the original inks used contain corrosive acid.

However, a team of European chemists and art historians have developed a technique which should preserve documents and drawings. The breakthrough was reported yesterday at the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Dublin by Dr Jana Konar, of the National Library of Slovenia.

Dr Konar and colleagues in Germany and Holland carried out a three-year trial, during which books and other documents have been placed in a sealed chamber, then saturated with solvent-based alkalines and anti-oxidants.

“We have shown we can prolong the lifespan of paper containing corrosive inks by more then ten times,” Dr Konar said.

“When this process is available on the market – I think in about a year – we will start manufacturing on a large scale.”